laughing with a mouth of blood

Just like an amnesiac, trying to get my senses back. 

Oh where did they go?

Being in psychiatry isn't doing my mental health any favours. I can feel myself losing my grip on absolute space and it is really scaring me. 

Currently I have a patient who is about the same age as me and has anorexia with binge-purge subtype. It's so weird. I feel like I should ask to be taken off her treatment team. It's having a weird affect on me. It makes me want to binge and binge and that scares me because I can't purge. It feels so strange because when I sit and listen to her explain her logic and the way she thinks, it's exactly the same way that I think. 

In a way, I'm jealous that she's so skinny and so able to starve herself and binge and purge. I want to be her. But at the same time, she's so ill. She's got a NG tube. She's got the biggest team of doctors and psychologists and eating disorder specialists and key workers and occupational therapists and more looking after her. We have to book out the special big room to have her treatment meetings. 

What's almost more frightening is how much everyone knows about the tips and tricks of ED. All the tips, everything I've ever read on how to fool people, how to hide things, every single thing and more has been mentioned. Things that I thought was secret to the pro ana community, they're not secret. Everyone knows about them, and in the inpatient centre here, they know how to spot them and stop them and punish them. 

And it's not just her. There is a patient who cuts. And everyone gets so up in arms about it. But I look at them and I realise that I cut deeper, more frequently and for more years of my life than this person. I have no right to treat them or to tell them to stop. It's a bizarre feeling  and it makes me wonder how sick I am and how deep it is in me. 

I think working in psychiatry is making me more sick. It makes me see things that I do that I wasn't aware of before. And it has forced me to face the fact that I am sick. Because there are people less sick than me getting intensive treatment. The only difference is that I  have learnt to hide it. 

it's a champagne year full of sober months

If you say it is, then I guess it is. 

Well so I talked to Ben today. More like, he forced me into talking to him. He's been chasing me around, asking me if he can talk to me to clarify what he was saying. I share my life on this blog and so I shall list a few of the comments that he made to me. And I say a few because I can't remember everything that he said to me. 

He said an awful lot. 

He said that he really likes me. 

My personality, my style, even the way I smell. 

That he's liked me for a while now, nearly a year and a half, and that he's always thought I'm cute. 

It's like playing poker. He's laid his hand out for me to see. 

In it is the ace of hearts. 

What happens now is up to me. I can choose to play on. Or to fold. 

It's like a line taken straight from some trashy teenage novel. I want to pinch myself because I cannot believe real people actually ever talk like that. Part of me still doesn't believe it. My sense of denial must run pretty deep for me to doubt the plausibility of something that has already happened. 

I tell him that there is a lot of shit in my life. In my head, I silently list them. Eating disorder. Low self esteem. Depression. Anxiety. Self harm. Attachment disorder. Body dysmorphic disorder. Suicidal ideation. I tell him that I think it's unfair for me to drop him in the middle of so much shit. And that he can't possibly understand the magnitude of shit that I'm talking about. 

He tells me that he wants to put up with the shit.

Is it worth it to put up with so much shit for me? Yes it is. 

But only if I think it's worth it. 

He tells me to take my time to think about it. Everything at my pace. 

Uneasiness wells up inside my chest. I already know that I cannot do this. It is all far too much. It is all far too overwhelming. I cannot deal with this. Not Ben. Not now. There really is too much shit. Too much for me to deal with. Too much for me to express to someone. 

I thought that once this day came, I would be relieved. Relieved to have someone who truly likes me and wants to be with me and to look after me. But I am just filled with fear. All consuming fear. I cannot handle it. There is too much fear. I cannot trust him. I cannot trust myself. And now I'm stuck. 

H-E-L-P help me, help me

I wish I had a gentle mind and a spine made of iron. 

Oh my fellow skinny-lovers, you have guided me thus far in my journey and have not lead me astray. Lead me not into temptation! 

I need help. Muscle connects to the bone and bone to the marrow and ire. I wish I had a gentle mind and a spine made of iron. H-E-L-P. Help me. Help me. 

It's currently one of my favourite songs and the mantra the defines how I feel about my current situation. 

A recent change in circumstance has sent me spiraling into a world of confusion and I can't even begin to think straight. I don't know what to do. Help me. 

Today, one of my friends, let's call him Ben, asked me out. I don't quite understand what this means. I thought he was joking for the longest time, but then he just flat out told me that he's interested and that now it's just up for me to respond however I want to. I don't quite understand what that means either. 

All I know is that I am filled with a sense of dread. For the first time in a very long time, I have absolutely no idea what is going on. I don't even know what to think of it. 

My first instinct is of course to say NOOOOOOOOOO. But then again, I think a bit more about the situation. Ben is a really nice guy. A REALLY nice guy. And we get along quite well. And he's kind of cute, in a little boy sort of way. It's not as if I haven't thought about dating him. On the more boring moments on the ward round, when he is joking with me and standing really close, I can imagine him wrapping an arm around me and giving me a quick hug. 

But I also know that Ben is the sort of guy who falls for girls really easily. REALLY easily. I also know that he really wants a girlfriend. And out of the people that he sees most often, in our rotation group, there are a few couples, the only single girls are me and my flatmate and I know she isn't his type. So he almost has to like me by default. 

I don't trust that he likes me for me. I think that he likes me because there is no one else to like. I don't want to hurt him because he is my friend and a really nice guy, but I also don't want to lead him on and then upset him later. 

Yet at the same time some crazy part of me is in a frenzy. I'd love to know what it feels like to have a boyfriend. I know Ben would be a great boyfriend. He would be so caring and supportive. I'd love to know what it feels like to be cuddled and kissed. 

I would not be so cruel as to drop him in the middle of my weight loss attempts and the cutting and the depression and the suicidal ideation. I don't know. 

H-E-L-P. 

Help me. Help me. 

I'll tell you good news that I don't believe if it will help you sleep.

Strange mercy. 

Did you ever really stare at me like I stared at you? 

A person like you could never understand the tsunami of emotion that crashes into the core of me each time I see you. The cold, bitter bite of love mingled with the warm, viscous red of my self hate sends my fingers tingling and makes the tip of my nose interestingly numb. 

For a moment, just a sweet, split second of paused time, the length of half a heartbeat, hope clouds my vision and I look into a future that will never come to pass. A feeling, an intuition that embodies another version of myself that has the ability to reach for a possibility of a promise of tenderness. 

There is so much that happens. Eternity and my whole universe melts around me and I find myself breathing in, just in hopes of catching your scent. (I've not managed to identify the exact fragrance yet but it is familiar.) 

Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock. He walks towards me, he's next to me, he passes me. And just like that, the moment is gone. I can probably count the number of words we have ever exchanged on one hand. I have never, ever been able to make eye contact. 

I might be smitten, hopelessly infatuated, but I am not, not, not, not, not stupid. And I have always had the wonderful gift of knowing my place. I know very clearly what I do and what I do not deserve. 

Then the weight of reality slams into me and that elation of love and hate and blood and promise turns into a rancid stench that crawls like insects across my skin and absorbs into my muscles and drags me down. 

The fatigue stays with me. Even at the gym. But I just think of you. And all the glory that surrounds you. I think of your biceps. Your abs. How I don't deserve to meet your eyes. And so I run, even when I feel like I'm going to fall off the treadmill. 

And so I run, I run like I am trying to get away from you. Because seeing you reminds me that I am not good enough. 

there is a hole in my heart so I threw away my plate

There is a hole in my heart, so I threw away my plate. Because nothing filled me up, no matter what I ate. 

It's a mantra that I wish I could adopt more easily. I recently heard someone say that starving is easy but eating is difficult because the more they eat, the hungrier they get. It's a statement that seems to sum up my life to a T right now. If I don't get, I can easily go on not eating. But once I start eating, some strange force just takes hold of me and mechanically and unemotionally I will continue shoveling food into my mouth until there is no more food left. 

I can really only describe it as akin to telekinesis or hypnosis. I can honestly say that while I am binging I am not fully away of what I am doing. But my limbs move, automatic. Like an intense state of concentration, it is all consuming. Literally. 

That is how I find myself on the treadmill at the gym. By the time I've burned 50calories, I'm already feeling numb and giddy. But 50calories doesn't even cover half the chocolate eclair I ate. One of several chocolate eclairs. On top of many other things that I've eaten today. In my head I am screaming at the gym equipment. Why won't the calorie count go up faster? Surely I've burned off more calories than that by now? An hour at the gym and 400cal burned, not even half of what I had for lunch. Don't get me started on how much I had at dinner. 

But the bliss of not eating, how I love the feeling of absolute power. How I long for it. But alas, it seems that I am not to experience it for a long time...

...yesterday morning was the weekly X-ray meeting. It's about an hour long and all the surgical teams are there, looking through the x-rays and CTs and ultrasound scans of the more difficult diagnostic challenges. A meeting of the minds. However, it is a small room, with not enough seats. The hierarchy is strong. The consultants sit, then the registrars, then the house officers. The few left over seats are for the trainee interns who arrive earliest. All others must stand. And I was standing. 

My flatmate and I looked on with some curiosity, listening to matters that were far too complex for us to understand, but interesting all the same. Towards the end of the meeting, I felt myself start to sway. Focussing with all my might, I spent all my energy on staying upright. I was not about to allow myself to faint in front of a room full of surgeons. 

Anyway, I managed to hold it together. Later that night my flatmate told me that she had seen me swaying and had been bracing herself for carrying me out of the room if I had collapsed. I've been collapsing so much recently. 

With the smallest exertion, I feel a rising fatigue. Like molten lead seeping into my muscles, they become heavier with each step I take. Running up and down the stairs with my surgical team is almost impossible and working out at the gym takes up all my motivation and energy. I should be able to lose at least 500cal at the gym in an hour. But I can barely manage 400cal. 

But I must go to the gym to work off at least some of my binge. But when I go, I start the next day already shattered, and so then I go to eat, and end up binging, then I have to gym, which makes me tired...the cycle of death continues. I don't really know what to do. 

half the calories and be still my beating heart.

Several rather different topics to rant about...please bear with my schizoaffective self. 

I've often heard people say that eating slowly halves the number of calories that you take in. I've always thought that it was such a ridiculous notion, but even so, rather a cute thought in itself. Today I discovered that it is very much true. SO TRUE! WHY DIDN'T I LISTEN EARLIER! My calorie intake has been hovering at 800-900cal per day. Today, we had some friends over to our place and so I ate dinner slowly, and I only had about 350cal before I felt really full and decided to leave the rest for tomorrow. 

I was so surprised at how full I was. This really explains why I always eat less when I go out with my friends. I'm usually too distracted by conversation to eat properly and even though I know I'm eating less, I always feel much more full. Gosh. Who would have though that conversation would literally halve my calorie intake. Magic. Can't wait to keep utilising this. 

Also, so much for recovering from my bout of illness and eating 3 meals a day. Back to one meal a day and it feels great! I'm still pretty light headed but I don't feel so guilty anymore. Am I just incredibly stupid to be coming across this eat slowly thing now? Honestly, if you haven't tried it yet, try it. It works without you realising it is working. 

And now for something completely different!!!!!

A few days ago I cut a treble cleff into my left ankle. Today my flatmate saw it. She asked me about it. She's getting really suspicious. I passed it off as scarification and now she thinks I'm really weird and I'm not entirely sure if she believed me. 

Another issue is that we now have 4th year students and we have been doing quite a lot of teaching with them to prepare them for their surgical exams. But this is their first ever hospital rotation and they want to practice on us instead of real patients. It's actually a really reasonable request seeing as the "patients" in their exam will be final year students like us. But the surgical exam is the surgical abdomen exam and I cannot show them my abdomen. Or they will see my scars. 

Sometimes this habit is incredibly annoying and isolating. 

And now for something completely different again!!!!

My scumbag brain has decided to strike again. Yesterday, it decided that I was to have a crush on one of my surgical registrars. And I am less than pleased about it. He's a really nice guy, as most surgeons are, contrary to popular belief. And I like him because he's only a first year registrar and he's really quite playful. Spare time is spent teasing everyone in sight. Yesterday he hit me over the head with some patient notes and stuck patient labels all over me because I was using his dictation log in. 


And he's pretty damn ripped as well. It seems that I have a very specific type. Guys with totally ripped bodies but rather cute and sensible looking faces. Kind of like, he must be strong but also smart enough to make enough money to support me! Not that I'll need it though because I will hopefully be making buckets of money myself. 


Ah, he's so cute and sweet. *sigh* stupid, stupid, scumbag brain. I loathe having crushes on people! I shall stop writing about him now. Don't want to bore your ladies with my trivialities. 


Hope you are all doing well and dropping weight and dress sizes! I love you all. 

feed my will to feel my moment, drawing way outside the lines.

Reaching out to embrace the random, reaching out to embrace whatever may come. 

Firstly, thank you Christina for that advice. I do try to do that sometimes and while I must say I never fully understand it, it does temporarily provide me with enough insight to at least know on a superficial level that people care about me. I might not take it in at all, but knowing it at all does help. 

There is a lot that I've been thinking about recently. And for the sake of my own sanity and ability to understand a life that is starting to spiral out in all directions, I will list the things that I have been pondering. 

1. My recent weight gain/lack of weight loss. 

There are not too many ways that I can look at this in a positive light. While I'd like to say that this was largely because I have been forcing myself to eat 3 meals a day in an attempt to stave off the collapsing episodes that I have been having, I have to admit that it is also because that I have been using a legitimate attempt to recover from illness as an excuse to eat. 

By default, I am not allowed to eat. And this is the setting that I have operated on for the past year and a half. There are times that I am allowed to eat, mostly these are times where I must eat in order to stop people worrying. Being on a setting where I am allowed to eat all the time, especially when I feel faint (which was all the time) meant I suddenly started eating everything that I wanted to. 

Like I was trying to make up for a year and a half of holding back. I lost all control and just ate like a little pig. And so I gained weight. I'm not surprised. I knew I was going to gain weight. But I allowed myself to slip, all under the guise of recovering from fainting spells. 

2. What I am going to do about this backward slide. 

At the end of the day, the basis of my entire problem can be reduced to a simple equation. If I eat more than I burn off, I will gain weight. As far as concepts go, it doesn't get much simpler than that. So the answer to this question is simple as well. Eat less. Work out more. 

How to fit that in is a rather different issue. Now that I've had an episode of binging, I'm stuck on that mode. I'm always hungry. All I can think about is food. And what else I can cook and what else I can eat and how I can scrimp on money to buy more food. It's ruining me financially. I have to just buy food once a week, and no more and just eat what I have. 

It's not much, but it's step one towards control. 

3. The cutting. 

Now this is probably the one that is the hardest fix of all. I'm writing this post as I pluck my eyebrows and I remember the first time I did it. It hurt so much that it made my eyes water and I wondered why women put themselves through this hell regularly just to have better eyebrows. Now I barely feel it and plucking my eyebrows is just part of my routine. Cutting is just like that. Now it is just part of my routine. 

There is no doubt that I cut more as I get more stressed out. As far as I am concerned, it is a really effective method of stress control. I don't really see a problem with it. My problem is that society doesn't seem to hold the same view as me. I'm running out of places to cut. My abdomen is bearing the brunt of it, but my scars aren't fading at all and I find myself cutting deeper and deeper. So much for the many sets of bikinis that I own. But at least winter is approaching. 

4. The help/the temptation/the burden/the professor. 

Those things are all and the same to me. There are so many issues around this that I don't even know how to start thinking about it. 

You will know that the professor offered to help me. But since I put on such a happy performance, he seems to have happily forgotten about it. I'm sure that the only reason I think that is because I don't see him very often. I'm sure that if I saw him every day I would realise that he has very much not forgotten and is carefully watching me. I think he thinks I am slowly getting myself better. And that pleases him. 

I don't want to worry him. But as I cut and binge and restrict and exercise, all I want to do is to go crawling to him and ask for help. No. It doesn't even go that far. All I want to do is to go crawling to him and have him pick me up and hold me so that I will feel safe. 

He is busy. Very busy. And to ask for time, to ask to be part of his personal life, to let him into the dark, dark depths that I dwell in is just too much. On some level, one more thing added to a million things to worry about isn't very significant. But I don't want to be "not very significant". But I also don't want to be a burden. 

Each day I am more and more tempted to write to him. And tell him that I'm not doing so well. To be held and comforted by a daddy, a different daddy to the one who caused me so much pain. But when I am in front of him, I can't help but smile and say that I am okay. It's not in my programming to tell people that I'm not okay. 

I want him to know. But I don't want to tell him. I want him to know without me telling him anything. 

Each day I feel like I am pinning too much hope on him. He can't be expected to fix me. Only I can fix me. 

5. The end of days.

When you realise how easy it can be to take your own life, in that moment the world seems to pause for you and you are filled with terror and power at the same time. I try to think of all the people who might give a toss. What would my flatmate do? She'd have to give up our current flat and go somewhere else because she certainly wouldn't afford a place like this on her own. 

My parents would be lumbered with the massive debt that I've accumulated during my education. My co-authors would be lumbered with the papers I've left half finished. 

Once that is sorted out, I will have a clearer mind. But on some nights, I don't think the guilt of letting people down is enough. Some nights, at some ungodly hour, I am awake in bed, literally twitching with the desire to drive out and find my train. It would be so easy. But no. I won't. Not just yet. Right now, there are other things that I have to take care of.